Running Wide Open (12 page)

As time went by, Race and I managed to find our groove. He quizzed me on the Driver’s Manual we’d picked up, and I learned to sleep through the trains that rocked the trailer at all hours of the night. I tried to keep in touch with my friends back home, but Tim’s parents wouldn’t let me talk to him, and Mike always sounded like he was trying to find an excuse to hang up. A couple of times my dad called, but I let Race do the talking.

At school, the work wasn’t much different than it had been back home, but somehow it seemed easier. Maybe because I didn’t have any friends yet, so there wasn’t much to do in class but pay attention. While the friendlessness got to me, I lacked the energy and nerve to do anything about it. I’d spent my entire life in the same house, going to school with the same kids, and now everything was different. With all that change, I couldn’t deal with trying to get to know people, too. Besides, school would be out in a few weeks.

The third Wednesday in May, Race dragged me out to the speedway for practice—something infinitely more boring than a regular race. The next morning it started to rain. The drizzle continued Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. My uncle, a guy who could shrug off mouthy drunkenness, shuriken embedded in his closet, and an unscheduled trip to Medford, got grumpy when it came to being rained out.

“If missing one race makes you this miserable, what do you do in the winter?” I asked when I got sick of hearing him grumble about the weather.

“Suffer.”

“Jeez, just drink a beer or something. Or better yet, take me out for a driving lesson.”

“It’s raining,” Race protested.

“No shit. This is Oregon. If you expect me to wait for the roads to dry out, I’ll be old enough to vote before I have a license.”

“All right,” Race sighed. He took me to Lane Community College, where the upper parking lots were practically deserted because it was a weekend.

“Okay,” Race said when I was belted in behind the wheel. “First of all, put your left foot on the clutch and your right foot on the brake.”

“Which pedal’s the clutch?”

“The one on the left.”

“So the brake’s in the middle?”

“Yeah.”

I pressed down the two pedals. “Okay, now what?”

“Crank her over.”

I turned the key. The engine rattled to life.

“Good,” Race said. “Now, take your foot off the brake and very slowly let out the clutch.”

The van lurched forward and died.

“I said
slowly
.”

“That
was
slow!”

“Well try slower.”

For the next twenty minutes he made me practice again and again until I got it right and could motor around the parking lot in first gear.

“Now, let’s try shifting. This van is what you call a three on the tree. You’ve got three forward gears, plus reverse, and the shift pattern forms sort of an ‘H’.”

“What’s a shift pattern?”

Race looked at me like I’d asked what the alphabet was. After he’d explained the concept, detailing where the gears were, he told me to try shifting from first to second. When I did, I jammed the linkage so bad Race had to get out, crawl under the van, and work it loose by hand.

“Okay, this is important,” he said as he slid back into the passenger seat. “All the bushings on the linkage are wasted, so you have to be very precise when you shift. Pretend you’re back in first grade, drawing a nice, square ‘H’ when you work the lever. Last time you rounded it off, like an ‘S’. That’s why it got stuck.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me that to begin with?” Crap, did he expect me to be born knowing all this?

“Sorry. I never tried to teach anyone to drive before.”

Another half hour passed. I jammed the linkage, lugged the engine, and then over-revved it. Finally I blew up. “This is impossible! You expect me to just know this stuff! I’m not a freakin’ race car driver!” I slammed my fist against the steering wheel.

“Hey, calm down. It’s no big deal. You’ll get it.” Race’s words were patient, even sympathetic, but he clutched the door handle in a death grip.

“Don’t you ever get pissed?” I demanded, glaring at him.

“Not usually.”

“Shit.” I rubbed my sore hand.

“Losing your temper doesn’t do anybody any good, Cody.”

“That’s easy for
you
to say.”

“Maybe so,” Race agreed. “Now give it another try.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon practicing. I must’ve killed the engine a million times, but Race never lost patience or suggested we quit. By the time we headed back to the trailer he was soaked from crawling under the van to free the linkage, but I could shift through the gears flawlessly.

“Good job, kid,” he said. “I’m buying you a pizza.”

I felt like I’d won a Nobel prize.

* * *

The cool thing about Race was that he didn’t act like a parent—more like a brother, or an older friend. He never gave me grief about the petty stuff Mom had obsessed over. That’s why it irked me when he got on my case about stealing the street sign.

It had tempted me every time we went into Springfield for groceries. Located at 4th and Main it said simply, “Police.” An arrow indicated the direction to the station a mere two blocks away. Who could resist a challenge like that?

Rationalizing that in the middle of the week there’d be less traffic, I waited until Tuesday night. I borrowed some tools from the box Race kept in the van then hoofed it across the bridge at about 2 a.m. The heist was easy. I shinnied up the pole, busted the sign loose, and hightailed it. Not a single car interrupted me.

It wasn’t until I got home that I had trouble. When I turned the handle of the trailer’s back door, I realized I’d locked myself out. No big deal. Race kept a spare key under a brake drum near the carport. I retrieved it and stuck it in the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. The front door must have a different lock. Okay, I could deal with that. Race slept like a zombie. A parade of hippopotami could sneak by him.

Maybe if I’d been a hippopotamus, I’d have had better luck.

“Cody?” Race mumbled as I pulled the door to a quiet
click
behind me. I froze.

“Where’ve you been? What is that?”

Too late I realized the lights that illuminated the trailer park were shining through the windows, glinting off the reflective paint on the sign.

“You’re dreamin’, dude,” I said softly. “Go back to sleep.”

Race didn’t buy it. He sat up, pawed for the lamp on the end table, and knocked it to the floor.

“Let me see that.”

I kept moving.

“Cody!”

I stopped.

“Kid, what do you think you’re doing? You wanna wind up in juvie?”

“It’s just a street sign.”

“Yeah, and it’s against the law to take ’em home with you.”

“Oh, I suppose that’s something you’d never do, huh?” I stared pointedly at the wall above the TV where an East 8th Avenue sign hung. It had taken me a while to make the connection. Eight was his car number.

“I was in college when I got that.”

“So you’re saying I’m too young to steal a street sign?” Hell. I got that crap from everyone. I was too young to smoke, too young to drink, too young to understand. Did everyone over the age of twenty-one think teenagers were complete morons?

“No, kid, it’s just . . .” Race’s voice trailed off. He rubbed his face as if he’d suddenly been stricken with the monster of all headaches.

“Well, that’s what it is, right? You don’t think I’m old enough. But it’s perfectly okay that
you
did it.”

“Cody,” Race pleaded.

“What the hell is it with people? Don’t you think kids have any rights?”

“Listen—”

“No, I’m not gonna listen! I’m not a baby! Either it’s right or it’s wrong. It’s not okay just because you were older!” I kicked his drafting table. An assortment of pens and pencils fell off, rattling to the floor.

“Okay, you’re right!” Race said. “It was just as bad when I did it. But you can’t take these chances. You’ve already had one run-in with the cops.”

“So?”

“So maybe I like having you around.”

I glowered at Race across the living room. Then, slowly, I sank down into the laundry chair. He liked having me around? I mean, I knew he didn’t mind me being there, but he actually
wanted
me?

Race looked steadily at me. “You can’t keep doing this, Cody—taking stupid chances and losing your temper. Actions have consequences. You can’t go around doing whatever you want and expecting to get off scot-free.”

It was too much—the seriousness in his eyes, the reasonable tone of voice, the admission that he liked having me around. I couldn’t look at him. “So . . . what do you want me to do?” I asked, staring down at my Converse high tops. “Put it back?”

“Hell no. You’d get busted for sure. But if you ever do something like this again I’ll kick your ass.” Race flopped back down in the tangle of blankets on the couch. “Now go to bed.”

I got up and headed for my room. Behind me, Race muttered in exasperation. “When people pawn a teenager off on you, they oughta send along an owner’s manual.”

Chapter 9

Cool as Race seemed to be, I wasn’t ready to let him in on my secrets, so I did my writing down by the river or while he was at the shop. I never let him see me with a book, either. But a couple of days after the street sign incident, the front door opened without the usual warning rattle of the van pulling up in the driveway.

Startled, I jammed the book I was reading down between the seat cushions. Race leaned through the doorway, too preoccupied to notice.

“Hey, kid, you wanna give me a hand? I need help pushing the van.”

“Why?”

Race grinned sheepishly. “I ran out of gas.”

“And of course you didn’t drive past a single station on the way home.”

“Just help me get it out of the road, then you can give me all the crap you want.”

Rain sprinkled us as we hiked out to the main drag, where the van sat in the turn lane, blocking anyone who might want to make a left into the trailer park.

“Let’s just get it into the driveway,” Race said, “and I’ll walk down to the gas station when the rain quits.”

Sure, that would be easy. It was all we could do to get the thing moving. Then, when the front wheels hit the ramp where the street met the sidewalk, the van balked and threatened to roll back on us. If I didn’t wind up with a hernia, it would be a miracle.

“Good enough,” Race hollered as we pushed his monstrosity up in front of the dumpster. The skies unloaded on us before we could make it back to the trailer.

“There’s this little thing on the dash called a gas gauge,” I told Race as I sprinted up the steps. “You might want to consider looking at it some time.”

“Doesn’t work.”

“What, you can build a race car, but you can’t fix a simple thing like that?”

“Don’t you ever give it a rest?” Race asked. “I swear you could try the patience of a saint.”

“You’re the one who said that if I helped push the van I could give you all the crap I wanted.”

Sighing loudly, Race sank onto the couch and began rifling through the junk on the coffee table. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it. I cringed as he proceeded to hunt through the wadded up blankets, inches from the spot I’d stashed my paperback.

“You seen the remote?” he asked

“Uh, no.” I scanned the room distractedly in hopes I might spot it before he proceeded too much further with his search.

Race reached down between the cushions. His eyebrows arched upward in surprise when he pulled out my book. “Hey, I remember reading this.”

For a moment shock overshadowed my sense of self-preservation. “You read
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

“Sure. In freshman English. I know it may come as a surprise, but I
am
literate.” He held the book out to me, resuming his search without another word, and I realized I’d been given the perfect alibi. As long as school was in session, Race wasn’t gonna look twice at me for reading.

Once I learned I could hide behind the guise of studying, I stopped worrying about Race discovering I was a freak. I even quit being paranoid about working on my stories when he was around. As a result, every time he caught me with my notebook, he got more curious about what I was doing.

“You’re still working on that assignment?” he’d say. “What is it, a journal or something?”

“Notes for the CIA,” I’d tell him. Or, “Addamsen’s paying me to document your racing secrets.” I knew he’d never sneak a look. He was too pathetically honest. But I kept my notebook stashed whenever I wasn’t writing in it, anyway.

That Saturday we got rained out again. I took up hermitage in my room with Neal Shusterman’s latest book, not because I was afraid of Race seeing me with it, but because his gloomy attitude was too contagious.

“It’s just a race!” I said. “They’ll have another one next week.”

“Someday you’ll understand, kid.”

“God, I hope not.” The day I let a bunch of beat-up cars rule my life was the day I’d throw myself in front of a bus.

* * *

One of the best things about living with Race was hanging out with Kasey. She seemed to know a little bit about everything, and if she didn’t know something, she knew where to find out about it.

Kasey had breezed through high school in three years, then college in another three. She’d designed some kind of timber processing machinery in her final year, sold it to a logging company, and made a pile of money. That money was what she’d used to start her business, Eugene Custom Classics. Race called it a restoration shop, but Kasey explained that she also modified old cars, swapping engines or making changes to the bodies. And lots of people brought their cars to her for general repairs, since it seemed to be getting harder to find mechanics who’d work on stuff from before 1970.

Race took me over to Kasey’s shop a lot the first month I was in Eugene, but it wasn’t until the beginning of June that I got to see her house. It was a Friday night, and she was having a barbeque.

“There’s a certain irony here,” Race explained as we drove through a woodsy neighborhood on the butte behind the University. “This street sort of peters out a little ways past Kasey’s, but it starts up again on the other side of 30th Avenue, and that’s where my parents live. In the ritzy part of town, naturally.”